The accusative (objective, the case of a grammatical object) is often listed as a case, but specific accusative forms exist only for the personal pronouns (minut, sinut, hänet, meidät, teidät, heidät) and the interrogative pronouns kuka ∼ ken “who” (accusative: kenet). This case is discussed in section Marking the object, subsection Use of accusative forms.
Many grammars describe the accusative as a mixed case that coincides with the nominative (singular or plural), or the genitive singular, or one of special accusative forms of pronouns mentioned above. This means that any grammatical object that is not in the partitive case is said to be in the accusative. The sentences Sormus löydettin (The ring was found), Löysin sormuksen (I found a/the ring), Löysin sormukset (I found the rings), and Löysin hänet (I found him/her) are all said to have their object in the accusative. This may simplify some descriptions, at the cost of introducing a many-faced “case”. In modern grammars, and in this book, cases are defined by their form, i.e. on morphological grounds, and this means that there is no accusative for nouns in Finnish.